Barron

by KJ Dahlen

  Barron just shrugged.

  Yuri called out Grace’s name.

  She stayed where she was but Barron pulled her to the front of the group. She stood in front of him and when he wrapped his arms around her Yuri raised an eyebrow at his actions. He turned to his brothers and told them, “This is Grace Konovic, she is Vitya’s niece.”

  “My name is Grace Daniels!” She growled, correcting him. “I don’t know this man and I am no relation to Vitya at all. My father was Gene Daniels.”

  Barron tightened his hold on her and whispered into her ear trying to get her to be quiet.

  Yuri tipped his head in her direction to acknowledge her. “Since we arrived here, we have discovered that Gene Daniels known as Gennedi Denisov, is no biological relationship to her at all. We have found out that she is the child of Irena Konovic and Nikita Kostavic. They were never allowed to marry as her father and brother had other plans for her and when they found out Irena was with Nikita, they threw Nikita in prison, and Irena had to escape in order not to be forced to marry Ivan Kolvastin.” He nodded. “Irena came here with Gennedi Denisov. He stayed with her until her child was born then he took the child, changed his name and raised Irena’s child as his own. That allowed Irena a chance to escape and she’s been in hiding ever since.”

  “What started all of this anyway?” Barshan asked.

  “Konovic finally found her father and shot him down in front of her,” Barron explained. “You see... Gene shot Ilya Konovic twenty five years ago after he raped and killed Gene’s younger sister.” His eyes got a hard glint in them as he spoke, “Vitya took exception to the fact his younger brother was killed and has been looking for Gene all this time. Grace witnessed the act and took off. Now he’s after her and he doesn’t give a fuck who he has to kill to get to her.”

  Barshan turned to Yuri, “We saw the damage outside, what happened?”

  Yuri’s face tightened in anger. “That bastard thought it was a good idea to lob a bomb into the compound. He’s working with the Vory V Zakone in the city. Net Chesti.”

  Barshan looked over at Sazon then back to Yuri. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “I have eyes on the compound and I called New York after I called for more men from home,” Yuri informed his brothers and all who stood around them.

  “Then let’s make a plan to take them down,” Barshan announced. “I spoke to Sergi this morning and he wants Konovic to stand trial before the High Council.” He turned to Grace and gently told her, “He wants you to testify against your uncle.”

  “He’s not my uncle,” Grace replied without rancor. “He’s just the bastard that shot my father.”

  “The truth will come out child, all of it. Whether you admit it or not he is your uncle.” Sazon told gently.

  “Not in any way that counts,” she insisted. “I don’t know what caused my mother to leave her family, Yuri took all the journals before I could read them, all I know is my mother gave birth to me then left. She walked out on me, not the other way around. Gene took care of me from the day I was born. He became my father, he became my only family, and I had to watch Vitya Konovic kill him. Then he burned my father’s shop down to the ground. He wanted no sign my father ever existed but he missed killing me. I am the last one to tell the world my father left something behind.”

  “But he damn near got to you this morning, didn’t he?” Yuri stated. “If these men hadn’t had safety features in place the bomb would have taken out the compound not just the shed. You all could have died this morning by his hand.”

  Grace felt tears fill her eyes.

  But Yuri didn’t let up. “Their deaths would have been on your hands and your hands only.”

  Something snapped inside her at his words. “You truly are a bastard aren’t you?” She screamed back, with tears flowing down her cheeks. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I realize exactly what kind of man Vitya is? I saw his eyes the moment my father died. I had to run for my life. I begged these men to just leave me alone but they wouldn’t. They brought me back here and this morning they could have died for their actions, so yes I realize the danger I put them in. You don’t need to remind me of that and the fact that you keep doing it, only tells me what kind of man you are.”

  Yuri crossed his arms over his chest. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  “You are nothing but a bully and a bossy motherfucker,” Grace told him then she broke away from Barron shaking with anger and tears as walked down the hall to the bedroom, shutting the door with barley a click.

  The men all looked to Yuri, then to Barron... they could see the anger on his face with his fists clenched tightly at his sides.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the silence that followed her departure, the tension in the room grew. The members of the MC stood on one side of the room and formed an invisible barrier between them and the members of the Bratva.

  Red glared at Yuri with his fists still clenched at his sides. “I do not care who you are. You do not talk to my woman like that.”

  Yuri glared at him.

  Sazon walked over to where they both stood. Barshan stood next to him.

  “Yuri,” Sazon said.

  Yuri looked over at his brothers.

  “We have a call we need to take.” Sazon nodded.

  Red was glowering at Yuri as he growled.

  Red’s VP moved over to his Prez and tapped his arm.

  Red barely acknowledged what was apparently a warning not to take this to a level that no one could back down from. “We will take this up after your call then,” he gritted between his teeth.

  Sazon led Yuri to the other side of the room as he got his phone out and glanced down at it. “What the fuck was that all about brother?” he asked him.

  Yuri stretched his neck. “I don’t know.” He growled low. “Ever since I met that woman, there is something about her I just can’t put my finger on. Her eyes remind me of someone I knew a very long time ago.” He sighed hard. “Her eyes haunt me, they haunt me with some memory I can’t quite grasp.”

  “How so?” Barshan asked.

  Yuri ran his fingers down over his face. “If I knew that maybe I wouldn’t be so confused by her.”

  “Confused?” Barshan asked.

  Yuri nodded. “I look at her and it’s like I’m seeing someone else, almost as if in another time.” Shrugging he admitted, “I don’t get it either but there it is.”

  “And you have no recollection of who she reminds you of?” Barshan asked.

  Yuri shook his head. Then he looked at them both. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

  Barshan glanced at Sazon then back at Yuri and shook his head. “You have to either get your feelings under control about this girl or let it go. We need to concentrate on getting Vitya Konovic instead of fighting within the club we came here to protect. Right now, they are beginning to wish we weren’t here.”

  Yuri looked over at the MC and saw their glares. He looked back at his brothers and knew what he had to do. He had to defuse the situation and quick or be locked out and this was something he could not allow to happen, he needed to be in charge, he wanted... no, he had take the lead on this or they would lose the trail of this Konovic.

  He sighed deeply then exhaled. This was a painful part of his past and he didn’t feel right even mentioning it but he had to say something. He turned and walked back over to face Red and his men. “I have been dealing with men like this Vitya all my life. An incident happened to me when I was about nine or ten I guess. It was a few years before I met my brothers, I do know that. I was living on the streets of Moscow that year, just trying to survive and I met an older man. He was living on the streets as well. One day, there were two brothers, maybe a few years older than I was, early teens at least. And they had a younger girl with them and she was lagging behind. She was begging them to wait for her but the two older boys ignored her. The older guy I was with, I called him my grandfather, he stepped up to help
the girl because she had fallen down and was crying. He didn’t mean her any harm, he was just helping her back to her feet, but the older brother didn’t like the fact that a street person was doing what they should have done for their sister. Suddenly, he struck the old man and he fell. The boy continued to beat him while the second brother began kicking him. I tried to stop them and I did a pretty good job too. I already knew how to street fight by then and was holding my own until the oldest brother brought out a knife and sliced the old man’s throat.”

  The men all listened. Red did not look calmer, but he seemed to listen as well.

  “The girl began screaming and calling attention to us and that’s when the boys ran off leaving her alone. I pulled the old man to the alley and she followed us. I told her to go home and she said she didn’t know the way.” He gazed down at the floor for a moment then looked up at Red. “I didn’t even know their names at the time but that didn’t matter. Those boys had just killed a helpless old man and they were barely old enough to know better. The little girl’s name was Irena. Anyway, the other street people came and said I should just go to another part of the city for my own protection, before the authorities got there. They knew and so did I that I would have been arrested for the murder and it would boil down to my word against theirs. They told me they would take care of grandfather for me, they all knew him too. So I left him with them and I walked away. The girl followed me for a few blocks and I kept telling her to go home. She was crying the whole time so I knew she would be in trouble when she did find her way home. I asked her since she did not know how to get home did she at least know where she was staying, she said yes, I didn’t have a choice, I ended up taking her back to the hotel where her father was staying at. When I saw the politsiya around the hotel, I told her to go inside on her own. She looked at me and told me she was sorry for what her brothers had done to the old man and to me. That she hated them and one day she would get back at them for everything they were doing to her and to others. Then she dug in her pocket and handed me a small key. She said one day, she hoped I would be around to receive a package from her and inside that package would be the proof she had collected over the years to stop her brothers from ever harming anyone again. She had said that she would never forget my name and that one day, she hoped we would meet again.”

  “What does this have to do with how you have treated my Grace?” Barron asked.

  “I think I just figured out why she’s so familiar to me.” Yuri nodded while looking at all the men standing around. He glanced down the hall at the bedroom Grace had gone into. “She reminds me of that little girl Irena. She’s older of course than that Irena was when we met but she has the same fire in her eyes, the same tilt to her head. Maybe it was her brashness, or something that reminded me of those two boys so long ago.” He shrugged. “There was just something I didn’t trust about her and I’m sorry if I let that show, to her and to you. It just seemed too coincidental that she came into contact with your group when she did, then to bring Vitya’s attention to you and your men. I had to ask the questions I did. I needed to know this wasn’t a set up to bring us down. Trust is hard for me to give, but I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, until I know more.”

  “I was about to plant my fist in your damn face.” Barron growled. “Your explaining makes sense and I can I respect your position, but I promise you if you hurt her again, you and will go toe to toe.”

  Kolya spoke up now, “She has done nothing but cooperate with us, even to the point of shelving her own pain at the loss of her father. She allowed us to gather surveillance tapes and her father’s secret papers. She handed everything over to you without you even giving her time to look at it herself. And you still treated her like shit, you put her down and treated at her like a bug under your boots.”

  Barshan and Sazon both turned to their brother. “Is this true Yuri?”

  Yuri nodded his head in affirmation. “Da, I guess that is exactly what I have done.” He looked at both his brothers standing there. “I remember those dirty streets and how hard life was for all of us at one point. We aren’t those boys anymore but the memories are still there. The trust is hard to accept, but when I saw her standing there in front of me, I had a flashback to that time and all I could feel was hatred I felt that day. The loss of a man that had been like my only parent, when I had no family.” Shaking his head, he admitted. “I lost sight of all the years between then and now and yes, I had treated her badly.”

  Sazon looked at the MC men. “You won’t have the chance to punch him because I’ll do it first if he doesn’t clean up his act around your Grace. Yuri is our leader but even he can make a mistake. One he won’t repeat. When he gives his word though, he keeps it.”

  Barshan cut in, “When we began looking into this man we found after some digging that he’s running a secret route of smuggling human beings all over the world. But there is even more than that. Vitya is moving drugs and smuggling other things along this line, not only women and children. He’s financing everything to anyone who pays his price. Blood diamonds, weapons to terrorist groups, money even.”

  “Do we know where he is right now? Is he still in the city?” Sazon asked.

  “Da, he is with the Vory V Zakone on the east side of town,” Yuri told them.

  Barshan growled. “Are you sure?”

  “Da, why?” Yuri scowled.

  “Is this Vory V Zakone led by Arkady Belizon?” Barshan wanted to know.

  “Da, he is in charge of this group of maggots, why?” Leonid asked.

  “Nikoli found a link from Arkady to the ring Vitya runs.” Sazon told them. “He is still trying to dig deeper and find out what they’re actually doing together but this is the first part of connecting the dots.”

  Barshan turned to Yuri. “The Nomads should be here this afternoon. We found another link in Vitya’s armor. His name is Alexander Rodchenko. He’s from the same area Vitya is living in and he disappeared a day or so ago. Nikoli found he got as far as the U.S. under a false name and he made it to Baltimore where his daughter is. He plans to take her and disappear. He somehow got a head’s up from someone and is now on the run.”

  A door opened down the hall and Grace slowly made her way into the main room. She walked over to the table behind Yuri and placed a small lock box on the table. Then she placed a letter on top of the box. She wouldn’t look at anyone but instead, stared at the box under the letter. “I found this in a bag I packed from my bedroom. Gene gave it to me a long time ago. I was never able to open it because I didn’t have a key for it, so I put it away in my dresser drawer, but I overheard that you might have one. In that bag was a letter from my mother that I think maybe you should read. For some reason she had faith in you. You made her a promise and she expects you to keep it.”

  She turned and would have gone back to the bedroom but Red reached out for her and gathered her into his arms. She laid her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat for a moment. Then her arms wrapped around his waist and she drew him even closer.

  Yuri looked over at the letter and the small lock box on the table. He dug out his wallet and took the key out. He’d had this key forever and at one time, it had been stolen along with his wallet from his own hotel. He almost smiled. It was actually how he’d met his Raven. All these years, he never knew if or what it would fit into and now he had his chance to find out. Fitting it into the lock, he turned it, not expecting it to do anything. When the box unlocked, he gasped.

  Looking up at his brothers, he saw their astonishment as well.

  Sitting down at the table, he began pulling out the pages of folded paper in the box. The papers were twenty five years old, so he was unsure how much good they would be now but he searched them anyway. One was a list of bribes paid to government officials. He knew most if not all of those names. Another was a list of Bratva men and the amount of bribes Boris Konovic paid them to overlook certain things. His hands clenched the paper as he read them, then he pass
ed them along to his brothers.

  They looked at the list then one another then to Grace.

  Grace wouldn’t look at them, however.

  Then Sazon picked up the letter she’d found with the lock box. As he read the words Irena had written, he wasn’t sure what to say. He passed the letter along to Barshan and tapped her on the shoulder.

  Grace nuzzled into Red’s chest but wouldn’t turn around.

  Sazon spoke kindly, “Grace, I know you have absolutely no reason to believe this but I’m glad you did what you did just now. Thank you for sharing with us something you didn’t have to. It will help set things right, not only here but back home as well.”

  Grace turned her head yet still held onto Red while barely speaking above a whisper, “He doesn’t trust me and to tell you the truth I’m tired of fighting with him. He just sort of bullies his way and runs over me and every time it’s like being hit by a truck. My life has become nothing but emptiness and I refuse to justify my very existence anymore. I never asked for any of this. I was perfectly happy helping my dad run his garage and now that’s gone. He’s gone, the garage is gone and the life I thought was mine is gone. I’ve got nothing left to give a damn about.”

  She took a deep breath and pulled away from Red.

  The men all stared at her. Red looked angry all over again.

  “I hope you can use whatever information you found to end that horrible man. I know until you do that I will never be free of the stain in my life. I absolutely hate the fact that I might be related to him. I want no part of that bastard, not even his name. Especially his name.” She shuddered.

  Just then, they heard the sound of vehicles coming into the compound.

  Yuri and his brothers along with Barron, Leonid, and Kolya went to the front door to see three SUV’s pull up to the front door.

  Four men got out of the first vehicle and nodded at Yuri and the brothers.

  Yuri turned to Barron and the others. “Gentlemen, the Nomads are here.”